21

Remy closed the door of their room behind them and turned to Feilan. ‘Are you all right? That was—’

Feilan picked him up by his tunic and slammed his back into the nearest wall.

Remy gave a startled yelp and put a hand over both of Feilan’s. That was all he did to defend himself – he didn’t try to pry Feilan’s grip loose, or start struggling and kicking, or rake his short nails into Feilan’s eyes. He merely hung there, one hand resting atop Feilan’s clenched-white fists.

Weak, said the bear-god. Oddly, He sounded just like Ulfr Njallsson.

Remy stroked his hand over Feilan’s hands and wrists. It was, part of Feilan still had the wherewithal to recognise, reflexive, an attempt to soothe the beast. Only the last shreds of Feilan’s self-control stopped him from punching him.

Remy asked, softly, softly, ‘What is it?’

‘Who did you tell?’ Feilan snarled.

‘Tell what?’

‘Did you cut a deal with Uncle? Is that why? Or did you just want Torben dead more than you wanted Adeline on the throne?’

Remy’s other hand was creeping towards the sideboard where the aquamanile sat. Feilan dragged him across the wall the other way, out of reach of that weapon. His grip tightened, and he leaned all his weight against Remy, pressing him hard into the plaster.

Remy’s breath shortened satisfyingly. ‘I…don’t…’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘I don’t,’ Remy said again, fighting the pressure on his chest to get the words out loud and firm.

The bear-god roared in Feilan’s head, demanding he relinquish all to Him so He could smash this treacherous, provocative little bug.

Underneath it, almost too quiet to be heard, came another voice.

You are Cursed, it said. You may feel anger, but it is not from the bear-god. You are nothing to Him. This anger is human. You may feel it, but you may not inflict it on others. It is controllable. Control. It.

Slowly, slowly, Feilan, concentrating on his mother’s voice, lowered Remy until his feet could touch the ground. He lessened his grip by painstaking degrees. The bear-god’s rage howled inside him, demanding the gratification of fist on flesh, and Freyja’s calmly imperious voice battled it, reminding him, over and over, that the bear-god’s gift was no excuse, Vaer pride was no excuse, Vaer temperament was no excuse, betrayal was no excuse, there was no excuse ever to lash out in anger.

Feilan lost the last of his air in one long gust as he finally managed to release Remy’s tunic. He stumbled away, making sure his husband was outside of his own reach. As hoarsely as if he had been the one crushed against a wall, he said, ‘Go.’

Eyes shut tight, he pushed the heel of his hand hard against his forehead, between his eyebrows, almost physically trying to shove the bear-god out of his head. He heard Remy’s footsteps in retreat. It took him a moment to understand that he’d not heard them retreat beyond the door, nor had he heard the door close.

‘Are you all right?’ Remy asked him again, this time from the doorway and far more cautiously.

Feilan laughed, a sick sound. After a moment, he said, ‘I’m not the one thrown into a wall by someone I trusted.’

He pressed his hand to his head again, because, figuratively, that was exactly what had happened.

No. Excuse. Little Wolf.

‘Was that your bear-god? You stopped Him doing worse?’

‘You said yourself, it’s a jolterheaded way of thinking about it,’ Feilan said. Every bone in his body was suddenly aching. He slumped onto the bed, lowering his head. ‘I’m Cursed. No god touches me. How badly did I hurt you?’

‘I’ll feel it in the morning,’ Remy said. ‘Nothing broken.’

The trust between them was broken. Feilan didn’t say that; it had been broken before his reprehensible behaviour had added to the damage.

‘Who did you tell?’ he asked again, staring down at his hands, big and worn, knuckles prominent. Twenty-five years of mercantile pursuits hadn’t erased a childhood spent training to fight, a wooden sword pushed into his chubby fist the moment he could walk. ‘I won’t hurt you again, Remy. I just need to know who you told.’

‘Told what?’ Remy sounded far too bewildered.

‘Stop it,’ Feilan said, struggling to keep his tone even. ‘There’s no point pretending. You’re the only person I trusted enough to let in on the ploy with the goat.’

‘The goat?’

Feilan’s head jerked up with the force of another alarming surge of rage. He ignored the pitch-perfect confusion and forced himself to keep talking – the bear-god did not trade in words. ‘And then tonight, someone knew exactly where it was. They cut its tether and drove it down to us, setting the monster on us.’

‘You think I did that?’

‘Not personally, no,’ Feilan said. ‘Too ruthless for you. But you told someone. Your uncle?’

‘But why would I destroy my own champion’s efforts?’ Remy shook his head. ‘I don’t think you’re thinking straight yet, Faro. I think you’re still in shock.’

That was outrageous; Feilan squashed the outrage down, breathed it out, clung to the shelter of Freyja’s voice, making it loud enough to drown out the roar of the bear-god, who sounded so much like his father it made him shake with a child’s fear. He fought to deafen himself to its demand that he prove himself a proper man, the true blood-and-flame bear-warrior he’d been raised to be before his dishonour.

Keeping his voice low, he said, ‘Because that is how the game is played, Remy. You have your pieces, and you position them as best you can on the board. And maybe you see that their position is not as good as it could be. And maybe one of them directly threatened you, and scared you. And now you find you have another play to make – information your uncle would want. And you can use it to get a deal for Adeline, more freedom than she’d otherwise have under her inevitable regent.’

Remy had started shaking his head about halfway through this calm explanation. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I would never betray Adeline like that.’

‘It’s not betraying her if it gets her more than she’d get when you lose outright.’

‘No. That’s not what she asked me for. I wouldn’t go behind her back. And…’ Remy bit his lip. He slowly drew up to his full, unimpressive height. ‘And I wouldn’t betray you like that, either, Feilan. I would never do you harm. I…I love you. I would never betray you.’

Everything went quiet in Feilan’s head. ‘You what?’

‘I love you.’

‘Remy,’ Feilan said, on a puff of air. But here was an argument he was prepared to have; it only needed words, and words beat back the bear-god. ‘Rufran. You’ve known me less than a month. I just tried to put you through a wall. You do not love me.’

Remy’s cheeks were staining pink, but he said, ‘I do. You pointed it out yourself. You told me I loved Queen Margalita. And I feel the same way about you as I did about her.’ He made the sort of gesture a lawspeaker might have made at the local Thing.

‘Ah.’ Feilan sagged back. He was mostly relieved. ‘Yes. Did you know her well, Remy? Or was she nice to you when no one else was, and gave you unsuspected tingly feelings?’

Remy folded his arms, mouth setting. ‘There’s no need to be cruel.’

‘I’m not trying to be,’ Feilan said. ‘Njorda’s tits. Will you come over here? I won’t hurt you.’

‘I know you won’t,’ Remy said, coming to him.

‘Can’t know that,’ Feilan muttered, but he put his arms around Remy as Remy sank unhesitatingly to straddle his lap and embrace him.

He stroked Remy’s back. ‘I should put something on this for you.’

‘It doesn’t hurt.’

‘It will. You know it will. And when you feel that ache, you think really hard about what love is and is not, good?’ He faltered over that habitual last word, crawlingly unseemly.

‘I know what it is,’ Remy said stubbornly. ‘And I know you won’t do it again.’

‘I won’t,’ Feilan said. He pulled a face, because that set the bear-god off into an ugly muttered protest in the back of his head. The battle-fury hadn’t had its usual outlet. It would take time to fully ebb. But he was in control now. ‘I won’t. Serthing gods, Freyja would be ashamed of me. But Remy, you did tell someone. Rosmunda? You told her about the plan with Adeline and Afzal. She’s been helping it along. So you thought you could trust her about the goat, too.’

Remy slithered off his lap to sit by him, apparently so he could turn and properly look him in the eye with full earnestness. ‘I’ve told her nothing. She genuinely finds their friendship sweet. And I didn’t tell her about your goat, either. I promise. I didn’t tell anyone at all. You said it was a secret. I kept it a secret.’ He gestured up at the window slits. ‘Someone could have heard from outside. We know sound carries.’

He winced – he’d probably realised the carelessness inherent in reminding Feilan of Torben even obliquely right now. Torben’s parlous state was not exactly far from Feilan’s thoughts already.

He said, ‘We were speaking too quietly for that.’

‘Air currents,’ Remy said, quite vaguely.

Feilan hummed to acknowledge the suggestion without actually countenancing it. He touched Remy’s shoulder lightly. ‘Let me tend to you. Acting like a woman disgusts the bear-god. It’ll make Him go away for good.’

He knew he was being superstitious. He’d even agreed with Remy – and Freyja – that it was beyond foolish to ascribe any responsibility for his own temper on a god who had turned His back on him like all the rest of the pantheon. And yet. That tell-tale pulse through his veins was obstinately slow to dissipate.

He seized on a bright idea. He’d remind the bear-god He was currently embodied within a cock-craving Cursed and needed to find a worthier vessel.

‘Is caring for another womanly?’ Remy asked, somewhere between innocent enquiry and his old acerbic scepticism regarding barbarian ways. The man spent his days caring for others, after all.

‘In the heartland, it’s women’s work,’ Feilan said, distracted. ‘I’ll get one of your salves. The one with the sky in it.’

‘The…sky?’

‘You know. The flash of blue. Sky-blue. You used it on Torben tonight, and on Noura, didn’t you, and yourself, for that cut. It heals well, and fast. No, it’d have to the jaundiced one, wouldn’t it? The one you gave me yesterday, after Torben hit me. Reduced the swelling substantially.’ He ran his hands down Remy’s back again.

Remy looked at him closely. ‘Jaundiced?’

‘Disgusting yellow smell.’

‘That’s the arnica and comfrey salve. It smells yellow?’

Noura appeared in the open doorway, then, holding a bottle. ‘Ah. I was coming to see if you needed to have firewater poured down your throat, but it looks like your little witch has you in hand.’

Feilan thought it equally likely she’d heard him raise his voice. ‘Bring it over.’

She sat on his other side, glancing without much interest around the sparse room. Remy’s wouldn’t be much different to her own guest chamber, Feilan supposed, remembering again how isolated Remy must have been before he invited two Vaer home with him.

No wonder he had it in his head he was in love with Feilan.

Feilan took the bottle and had a long pull. It was an unfamiliar clear grain-distillation, sharp, potent, stronger than the small ale common here. He pressed it on Remy, who took a few smaller sips before handing it back to Noura. They took it in turns like that until half the bottle was gone.

‘Thanks,’ Feilan said eventually, turning to Noura. ‘You need to get back to Aminah?’

She cuffed his ear lightly. ‘I sleep here. She sleeps at the foot of our master’s bed.’

‘I’m a jolterhead. Sorry.’

Noura shrugged in her usual brusque fashion, though Feilan guessed it was part of her method of holding her walls intact. ‘Don’t apologise. Get her out.’

He’d had enough of the bottle to ask. ‘How did it happen?’

She’d had enough of the bottle to answer. ‘Nothing unusual. Territory got invaded. We rode out to fight in our great horde, and fell beneath superior forces. Disciplined devil-creatures. They’re coming this way, too, putting their dead-straight roads through more territory every year. You Vaer better get ready for them or they’ll overrun all your favourite raiding haunts.’

Feilan nodded. His network had been whispering about the western expansion of an ever-evolving alliance of east-coast city-states for years. It was part of why Olvar, the baby emperor who had so disgusted Torben by permanently laying claim to entire townships, was intent on his own expansion.

Noura went on, tone even flatter, ‘They gave our warriors honourable deaths, but when they realised I was a woman, they stopped treating me like a warrior and started treating me like a woman. When they were done, they sold me at the slave markets. Didn’t fetch much,’ she added with grim satisfaction. ‘My master bought me cheap as a boast: look at me, daring to master the wild steppes woman.’

‘Your daughter…’

She laughed harshly. ‘Not his. He never tried it, weak as piss. No, I was already carrying her by the time I was on the auctioneer’s block. An invader put her in me.’ She looked at them both, then snarled, ‘Don’t you dare pity me. She’s the joy of my life.’

Feilan held up his hands, discovered the bottle in one, and took a sip. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I know this world isn’t kind to women.’

Noura snatched the bottle. ‘This world,’ she grated, ‘isn’t kind to anyone. But it’s especially not kind to those who are strong in ways it refuses to recognise as strength. You know that. You both know that.’

She gave a definitive nod and drained the bottle to its dregs. ‘My joy,’ she repeated, ‘but also my tether. I have a long leash, because she’s a short leash, chained by his side. The worst was watching him watch her. Waiting for her to ripen.’ She spat on the floor and threw the bottle after it. It bounced across the rug and onto bare polished stone but didn’t break. ‘His men had to beat me bloody the first time he took her to his bed. She was not much older than your Adeline.’

Feilan shook his head slowly: Noura had to win a freedom tattoo for her daughter, and yet there was not a power across all the grand kingdoms and minor holdings of Enea that could make Feilan let her master win control of another little girl.

He wished Freyja would write back.

‘Yeah, one more thing that hurts like shit,’ Noura said, ‘but whether I live or die next moon, Feilan—’

‘I will get her out.’ He would personally see to it, if Freyja failed to come through.

‘I’ll fly down from the Eternal Sky to twist your stones off if you don’t, and my ancestors will spit on your descendants until it cracks open and ends us all.’

Having delivered this matter-of-fact curse, Noura rose, gave them both another brisk nod, and departed, kicking the bottle carelessly aside and closing the door behind her.

Feilan glanced over at Remy. His husband had been so quiet, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find him dozing off amid alcohol fumes, but he was looking at the closed door with a frown.

‘I can sleep in Torben’s room,’ Feilan said.

Remy blinked out of his fixation. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I just— You will help her daughter?

‘Both of them.’

Remy slid his arms around him and rested his head against his shoulder. ‘I don’t care what you say. You are kind.’

Feilan sighed. ‘And now I’ll get that salve to treat where I so-kindly hurt you, you trusting jolterheaded fool.’

He fetched the salve from the tray, picking it unerringly from the couple of other identical jars because of that unpleasant fragrant undertone of sickly yellow, apparent even in the dim room, and returned to the bed. Remy had trouble lifting one of his arms as Feilan helped him out of his tunic; his shoulders were beginning to stiffen up where Feilan had slammed him against the plaster.

See? he wanted to say, and didn’t. Too much of that, and it sounded like he was demanding the sympathy and comfort that only one of them deserved right now.

He smoothed the thick salve over Remy’s shoulders and upper back, and touched fingers lightly to the back of his head, exploring for a lump, trying to recall those rage-filled moments to know if he’d thrown him hard enough to make his head bounce into the wall, too. He couldn’t.

‘Did I get you here?’

‘No.’

‘Your chest? I’ll have left bruises there.’

‘No,’ Remy said again, which was just pigheaded; Feilan was no bear-warrior, but he wasn’t small and he’d been leaning his considerable weight onto Remy. That left its traces.

Feilan made Remy turn so he could look at his chest for himself, but Remy was correct – he bore no visible sign of the assault there. Feilan rubbed the remnants of the salve across his slender pectorals anyway. Remy’s skin goosepimpled under the touch and Feilan silently held out his tunic to him. Remy bunched it up in both hands, looking uncertain.

‘I am sorry,’ Feilan said, because he hadn’t said it – Vaer men didn’t, and so it was another way to remind the bear-god he wasn’t a Vaer man, and he owed it to Remy regardless.

‘The man you love almost died and you think I did it,’ Remy said. ‘Circumstances were extenuating. Not to say I’ll be as understanding next time. But, Feilan – at least grant yourself the same grace you grant Torben, or admit he doesn’t deserve it either.’

‘There won’t be a next time,’ Feilan said, judiciously ignoring the rest. ‘And I believe you when you say you didn’t tell anyone.’ He grunted, more to himself than at Remy. ‘And, look, I don’t love Torben, not in the way you think. I can’t, because…’

He’d imagined himself telling Remy about this, this very evening, before the monster attacked, when he’d suddenly realised he trusted Remy more deeply than he had anyone else except Freyja for years.

But it hadn’t taken long for the bear-god’s rage to persuade him otherwise, had it?

He’d had one of his bright ideas about that, before Noura’s well-intended interruption.

‘Let’s just say betrayal’s a touchy subject for me.’ He curled his fingers against Remy’s cheek. ‘Would you fuck me? Or is that too much to ask?’

‘I don’t…’ Remy looked down at himself, and then back at Feilan, his slight smile lingering at the edges of his mouth. ‘I don’t believe you’ve been driven into wild lust by the sight of my scrawny chest.’

‘You’re lovely,’ Feilan assured him. ‘But no, it’s superstition. I need to thoroughly remind the bear-god I’m a Cursed. Don’t complain, you get a fuck out of it.’

Remy was still looking amused in a confused sort of way. ‘If you know it’s superstition—’

‘Remy!’ Feilan said, louder but carefully not too loud. ‘I’ve been to one side of Enea to the other many times over. I’ve met people with one god and people with twenty-five gods. I‘ve met people who think their gods walk with them every day and people who believe the gods left them alone a long time ago, and people who have no gods and appease nature spirits instead. And I’ve met people who ascribe everything from losing their purse to the colours in the northern sky to the very rising of the sun to pure magic, and I’ve even met a bunch of vaettar, little elves, with abilities I couldn’t begin to explain away except with magic. All of it very different to Vaer beliefs. I know we can’t all be right. I know it’s all just superstition of one kind or another. It doesn’t mean I’m immune to it.’

He was still a little drunk, and not explaining himself as clearly as he’d like. It came down to this. ‘Will you take me like you’d take a woman to scare the bear-god away for good, or not?’

‘I’ll do anything you want me to do,’ Remy said, ‘if that is what you want.’

He left unsaid the corollary: because I love you. Feilan heard it anyway, and had to bite his tongue. He said, ‘You are beautiful, husband,’ and spread his palms over Remy’s bare and gleaming chest. ‘Put your beautiful cock inside me.’

Remy followed him unhesitatingly as he lay down, lying atop him to kiss him for a long, dreamy while before breaking off to ask, ‘Will you help me? You used your fingers, for me, and I don’t know how to do that.’

‘I don’t want coddling,’ Feilan said, and received such a severe look that he laughed. ‘All right. Get some oil.’

He rapidly stripped himself, and Remy brought back a viscous and golden oil from the tray, expensive and perfumed. Feilan breathed in the strong but delicate scent when Remy tugged the stopper out and tipped the oil onto his fingers.

‘What colour is this?’ Remy asked as he rubbed his fingers together, spreading the oil.

‘Golden yellow,’ Feilan said, puzzled. Then, at Remy’s lift of the bottle towards his nose, he understood. ‘Oh, what colour does it smell? Pale green, like unripe olives.’

Remy closed his eyes, head tipped to the side; Feilan supposed he was trying to map whatever colour he smelled to the colour Feilan smelled. Helios had become interested in colour-matching as well during their affair on Ysthera, though Feilan suspected that was more to do with poking fun: Vaer had seven colour words, Ystheran twelve just to delineate the precise shade of sunlit greenery. That Feilan, until his Ystheran improved, had to describe the colour of smells with cobbled phrases such as ‘mostly blue, but as if a storm was blowing up during spring’ appeared to both amuse and bemuse him no end.

‘Is it… Do beautiful smells have beautiful colours for you?’

‘Sometimes,’ Feilan said, working on easing the rest of Remy’s clothes off. ‘Not always. Reeky smells have murky colours, though. Except blood. Blood’s the most astonishing blue you’ll ever see: you could use it as a beacon.’

‘I see.’ Remy looked like he was thinking up more questions, which was suggestive of a delaying tactic.

Feilan ran his palms down his bared flanks. ‘If you don’t want to do this—’

‘Oh, no, I do.’ Immediately putting the little glass flask aside, Remy bent over Feilan, oiled hand sliding between his thighs. He was frowning.

Feilan touched the pronounced line between his eyes. Again, he said, ‘Remy, if you don’t want to…’

‘I’m concentrating. Like this?’

Feilan made a mild sound of agreement as Remy probed into his hole, revelling in the stretch. ‘And then, if you can— Yes, like that.’ He jolted at the burst of sensation. ‘Add another.’

‘We,’ Remy said, in his witchiest voice, ‘will proceed at my pace, not yours.’

Feilan made a mocking noise at the stern tone, which transformed partway through to a rather appreciative one, because Remy had just crooked his finger without altering his stern expression, and Feilan suddenly didn’t think he’d be able to observe him bossing his clients about his cave with any sort of equanimity ever again.

Remy did eventually add a second finger, and then a third, and then, frown more pronounced, oiled his cock, which Feilan watched with heavy-lidded eyes. He’d been exhausted, physically and emotionally, and tipsy, and merely trying to quieten his own mind with a sacrilegious act, but now he felt the familiar energy of desire.

He thought, given how fiercely Remy was frowning, that if he stroked Remy right now like he dearly wanted to, he might be enjoyably spattered with copious seed again, but he wouldn’t get the fucking, the literal serthing, he needed.

‘Do we have to do it on hands and knees?’ Remy asked. ‘I’d prefer to be able to kiss you.’

‘Come on, then,’ Feilan said roughly, half-drunk again on pleasure.

He hooked a leg up, and Remy came between his spread thighs, intent and looking like he’d want to be talking himself through the process if he hadn’t presumed Feilan would mock him for it. He felt Remy’s steady push into his tightness, filling his body with vital warmth and emptying his head of every thought. Then Remy was deep inside and his mouth was on his, and they were slowly rocking together, Feilan moaning and Remy gasping into his mouth.

Feilan dug his fingers into Remy’s hips and urged him on harder. ‘Take me.’

Remy obeyed, his fists gripped commandingly into Feilan’s hair, thrusting with a rising urgency that quite displaced their comparatively languid previous pace. Feilan fell back and arched into it, and Remy cried out and reared up over him, hips bucking. Feilan shut his eyes and exulted in the pulse inside him as Remy climaxed.

Remy slid out of Feilan, and then slid down his body, and his mouth engulfed Feilan’s cock to the root in one open-throated swoop. Feilan felt him swallow around his cock, throat rippling, and he cursed, spending with helpless, almost violent, jerks of his hips that had to be challenging Remy.

But Remy swallowed again, and came up looking very pleased with himself. Feilan dragged him down for a kiss, licking his own spend off his lips.

‘Good,’ he pronounced, rolled Remy off him, and wrapped his arms and legs around him. He was asleep before he had time to remember to worry about Torben.